Educational Materials
Educational Materials
Embedded Files
Books:
The Crisis of Christian Nationalism: Report from the House of Bishops Theology Committee
Bilingual edition with a discussion guide (English/Spanish) (Publication date: Oct. 1, 2024
This bilingual report serves as a timely and accessible resource for confronting Christian nationalism. Its strong theological
grounding, paired with practical components like a discussion guide and case study, makes it a compelling call to faithful
reflection and action, challenging Christians to resist nationalist distortions and instead be inclusivity-centered agents of
the Gospel.
Caleb E. Campbell, Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor (IVP), 2024
In a time when faith is too often entangled with fear and power, Disarming Leviathan calls Christians back to the radical heart of the Gospel: love of neighbor. Rather than fueling division, resentment, or nationalism, the book invites readers to imagine a discipleship rooted in humility, compassion, and mutual care. With clarity and pastoral wisdom, it explores how Christians can resist the temptations of control and domination, and instead embody a way of life that disarms hostility with grace.
Chris Hedges, American National Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (New York: Free Press), 2006
Hedges discusses the movement of the religious right over the last fifty years in the context of its overtones with fascism, both historical fascism and its technical features (channeling the work of Hannah Arendt and Umberto Eco, especially). He describes the ways in which the Christian nationalist movement brings in new and old Christians alike, channeling their frustrations with American social and political declines to a radical revolutionary political movement. He also looks especially at the aggressive misogyny of the movement, as well as the roles racism and nativism play in aggravating the energies of Christian Nationalism. Though much derided at the time of publication (during George W. Bush’s second term), many of his most dire warnings have already come true in the past ten years. His book is a clarion call to action and a deep descriptive work.
Kevin Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books), 2015
Kruse’s text goes into the deep history of the religious right, especially highlighting its origins as a corporate backlash to the New Deal of FDR. He is a historian by training, and his work reads as a fairly straightforward historical account of how several popular preachers embraced totalizing libertarian economic principles in opposition to the higher tax rate and greater levels of regulation brought about by FDR. He also demonstrates the ways in which this reactionary political stance was the basic impetus behind many of the networks and organizations of the religious right into the 1970s.
Matthew D. Taylor, The Violent Take It by Force (Broadleaf Books), 2024
Drawing on Jesus’ striking words, The Violent Take It by Force wrestles with the troubling ways Scripture has been used to justify power, aggression, and exclusion. This book explores the tension between the violence of human ambition and the nonviolent way of Christ, offering a thoughtful, pastoral invitation to reexamine how Christians understand strength, struggle, and the kingdom of God. It calls readers to discern between coercive force and courageous faith, and to embrace a vision of discipleship grounded not in domination, but in love.
Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Penguin), 2004
Paxton’s book, though less directly focused on Christian nationalism per se, centers on the phenomenon of fascism, describing what it is and is not (e.g., it is not conservative) through a deep dive into historical fascist movements (both successful and unsuccessful in their respective nations). He describes the animating passions behind fascism, many of which are clearly at the foundation of the Christian nationalist movement, and he discusses the ways in which fascist movements have morphed in recent decades to improve their standing in normal parliamentary politics (this is in evidence in both France’s National Front and Mussolini’s former party, which is now in power in Italy). Paxton has been widely recognized as an authority on fascism since the 1970s, and has come out in the last year clearly describing Trump’s MAGA movement as meeting the technical definition and understanding of fascist.
Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (New York: Bloomsbury), 2020
Stewart’s text should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding Christian nationalism as a movement. She delves deeply into many of the central aspects of the movement, also showing how it organizes, the ways in which it mobilizes voters, and more. She and Hedges are both journalists by training, her text reads much more clinically (straightforward, factual, descriptive) while Hedges’ text is more like a report and a voice crying out in the wilderness. Stewart’s analysis pulls together the various strands of the Christian nationalist movement, its key players and organizations, the directions it wants to go, and recounts various activities of Christian nationalists once they have achieved power (Trump’s first term bringing a number of prominent Christian nationalists into the halls of power).
Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 2021
This text will explore the ways in which the Civil Rights era inspired a racist backlash that coalesced into the Moral Majority movement of the late 1970s. The author argues that Christian Nationalism and the Religious Right got a major boost
by opponents to racial integration, many of whom argued against it on grounds of religious freedom (stating that their belief in white racial superiority was a religious one and therefore not subject to proscription by the government). Though they would lose this battle in the public sphere as public accommodation laws came into effect, they would win in the long term by carving out increasingly wide exceptions for religious conscience in areas such as women’s reproductive rights, LGBT rights, and more. Recent Supreme Court decisions around LGBT rights and ‘creatives’ (birthday cake makers and more) follow this line of thinking but merely apply it to a different minority group.
Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, (Harper), 2023
A powerful account of evangelicalism's transformation, and in many cases, corrosion by political extremism. Through vivid storytelling, investigative rigor, and personal reflection, Tim Alberta challenges readers to consider whether faith means winning cultural wars or embodying Christlike humility.
Phillip Gorski and Samuel Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2022)
Provides a compact yet powerful sociological and historical breakdown of white Christian nationalism. Through a "deep story" framework, empirical indicators, and historical lineage, the authors reveal how religious identity, race, mythology, and political power intertwine to undermine democratic values. Their urgent call for collective democratic resistance underscores the stakes for America’s future and the health of its democracy.
Amanda Tyler, How To End Christian Nationalism (Broadleaf Books) October 22, 2024
How to End Christian Nationalism is a compelling, spiritually grounded roadmap for Christians to actively confront an
ideology that distorts faith for political ends. Its strength lies in marrying rigorous analysis with faith-informed action,
rooting resistance in Jesus’s teachings of love, justice, and humility. If you're seeking clear guidance on how faith and
democratic values can intersect to resist authoritarian, exclusionary ideologies, this is a timely and essential read.
If you're part of a church group or spiritual community wrestling with the role of religion in public life, the step-by-step
approach paired with scriptural reflection makes this a powerful group study resource.
Videos:
The REAL Problem with Christian Nationalism (10:22)
(Everything by Holy Post is good: a very thoughtful self-critique from an evangelical perspective)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgC7YQAtGOw (7.17)
(introductory interview of scholar Brad Onishi by PBS)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XsORP-VuRI (5.03)
(Robert Reich on MAGA and Christian Nationalism)
The Rev. Dr. Carter addresses hearing that some Evangelical Christians were hurt by her approach in her book, The Seven Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism: A Call to Action and revises her suggestions to us for furthering the healing by sincere listening..."for those of you who voted differently from me, you are also struggling to do the right thing, and I respect you." She speaks of the dangers of "hating the haters...how do we work ourselves through the hatred?", rather, we need to engage in "Radical Mutuality...drawing each other out humbly...that is how God works among us." Dr. Heyward also states: "Facism wants us to limit our resistance to prayers - quiet complicity, not taking sides." She concludes: "The Spirit's irrepressible movement for justice/ love amongst our people will give us our strength everyday."
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